1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multi-compartment, user loaded holder for holding an individual set of medications for the user, the holder being ring shaped.
2. Background of the Prior Art
Many people take medications for all sorts of ailments as well as vitamins and supplements in an effort to help prevent such ailments. Many medicine and vitamin consumers keep the products in their original container, which is satisfactory for home usage and storage. However, when traveling, even for the day such as going to work or for a pleasure trip, keeping medicines, vitamins, and supplements in their original containers can prove awkward.
As many of the containers are relatively large and bulky keeping a product in its original container makes transporting the container difficult, especially when multiple containers are needed. Not many people want to travel around with a shopping bag full of various containers, especially when traveling by commercial carrier such as by airplane. Additionally, whenever it is time to take the products, possibly three or four times a day, each container must be individually opened, the appropriate amount of the product removed, and thereafter the container closed. While workable, this time-consuming and tedious procedure is not welcome by most.
A simple solution to this problem is to place all of the medicines, vitamins and/or supplements into a single container so that only a single container must be carried, stored, and manipulated by the user. Unfortunately, this solution is fraught with problems in that various medicines have varying dosing requirements (some may be taken as a single dose 3 times a day, some might be taken a double dose, twice a day, etc.), and as most people are not sufficiently intimate with their pills as to know not only what the dosage requirements are for each medicine, but also what each medicine looks like, so that the correct medicine in the correct amount can be retrieved from the container. This solution tends to work only for the most disciplined users.
To address the above, multi-pill storage containers have been proposed. These containers, which come in various architectures, have multiple compartments that allow a user to place a single sitting dosage into each compartment. For example, one compartment may be for morning pills and the other for evening pills. In this way, the pills are stored in a relatively compact container and are segregated into the proper dosages for each time period of pill consumption. Whenever it is time for a person's medicine, including vitamins and supplements, the compartment containing the pills for the particular time period is opened, the contents retrieved therefrom, and consumed in the usual way. While many of these devices are effective, they still suffer from certain shortcomings.
Some of these devices have relatively simple pop open and snap shut lids. If a user places such a container into her purse and is not careful, one or more of the lids can inadvertently open allowing the contents of those cells of the container to spill either into the purse, or possibly onto the ground if the lids open when the device is being retrieved. Additionally, many people are self-conscious about their medicine containers and do not necessarily want others to know that the user is carrying medicine, especially in situations when the user is hand carrying their medicine to assure that it is not lost. As many of the pill storage containers are immediately identifiable as pill containers, many users find a certain level of discomfort in using such devices for pill transport.
What is needed is a device that allows pills, including medicine, vitamins, and supplements, to be stored for transport, which device addresses the above mentioned shortcomings found in the art. Such a device must allow the pills to be segregated so that the correct pills in the correct amounts are immediately available at a particular pill consuming time. Such a device must minimize the risk of content spillage from the device. Such a device must not have a sterile utilitarian look to it so that users may fell less self-conscious carrying their pills in the device whenever the device is exposed to view. Ideally, such a device must be relatively simple to use.